[pwg]

A small number of jobs for tradesmen (electricians, plumbers, etc.).

A small number of jobs for security guards.

Maybe a tiny number (one to three?) for individuals tasked with actual hardware swapping within the data center itself.

And all of the above assumes the data center owner does not "travel in" the requisite individuals on an "as needed" basis -- in which case the only jobs that may go to the locals is "security guard".

But all of the "sys-admin" management level work can be done remotely.

So the actual number of new jobs that arrive in the locality is likely on the order of 20-30 or fewer.

[SteveNuts]

Yeah and that type of work bid usually goes to huge conglomerates. A local mom and pop electrician shop isn’t going to be building a datacenter, it’ll be something like Siemens.

[EvanAnderson]

A friend of mine is an independent electrician in the Columbus, OH area. Last summer he told me he was getting plenty of datacenter construction work, albeit it was in the form of subcontracted jobs from the larger firms who were awarded the contracts.

[duskwuff]

Even if the datacenter does hire some local labor for construction, that's still all temporary jobs. It's not an ongoing source of employment for locals.

[dzhiurgis]

They'll pay tons in taxes to energy company.

[quickthrowman]

I work for an electrical contractor that does large data center projects and we almost always partner with a local contractor to provide labor from the local union(s).

[sleepybrett]

sure, that only covers construction though. Once the thing is built they are going to travel in all the maintenance that needs to happen, and that local tradesman is not going to get to many new home construction jobs after it goes in. Who wants to live nearby a noise polluter like that?

[uberduper]

Local shops will absolutely be contracted to work on the project. A datacenter project like this can't find enough qualified electricians.

[pseudohadamard]

I would imagine there aren't too many electricians in Yeehaw, Minnesota, trained and qualified to do gigawatt data center installs. So they'll freight in contractors to do that work, and maybe temporarily employ a few locals for a month or two for auxiliary stuff.

More generally, this is the universal playbook when someone wants to dump some megaproject on a community that doesn't want it: This will create X jobs and inject $Y into the local economy. Can you name one case where this actually happened? It's usually very few additional permanent jobs and, particularly for public-works stuff, millions or even billions in extra debt to pay off. But don't worry, this next thing we're working on once we get the local council to issue a permit to bulldoze your forest park, that will bring in jobs, we promise.

[cucumber3732842]

>Yeah and that type of work bid usually goes to huge conglomerates.

Which are exactly the kinds of entities that the trades unions and industry interest groups are most deeply in bed with.

[adolph]

> A small number of jobs for tradesmen (electricians, plumbers, etc.).

Its no car dealership but probably a reliable source of work-orders. Seems like a "gigascale" datacenter would be a large job for a tradesman to be a subcontractor within and afterward its scale means continuous upgrades/maintenance.

Is there any literature of ongoing economic impact of similar facilities?

[jagged-chisel]

How many of these are on-going jobs vs during construction and as-needed? I think you're right it'll be only security guard jobs. Even if they don't travel in workers, it's quick short-term tasks that maybe locals can perform, but that's not "creating jobs."

[hahahacorn]

This argument has always been such a weird goalpost shift for me. Even at my full time job I am getting strung together by 3-12 month projects. Everyone works on projects. When this data center is done in a year, we'll (hopefully) need to build something else, keeping those people employed.

Like, of course it's creating a job. If you create a million 1-year jobs every year, that's a million jobs.

[LargeWu]

Because the "it'll create X jobs" implies it's ongoing. It's a disingenuous attempt to oversell the benefits because they know if they're transparent about it, suddenly it doesn't seem like such a great deal.

[Rekindle8090]

Actually if they were honest they'd say "It'll create x careers", which is a much better deal than just a job. Friend went from 17 an hour at his first DC to 100/hr last year with 70 people on his team.